


Farouche bravoure de la vie

by midautumnnightdream



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, Graphic Descriptions of Historical Locations, Jean Valjean has no idea what kind of skillset an Independent Adult Daughter is going to need anyway, Not A Fix-It, Patron-Minette - Freeform, Post-Barricade, The One Where Cosette Gets To Grow Up, Women Being Awesome, and everyone else has to deal, but he is trying, canon era AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24720364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midautumnnightdream/pseuds/midautumnnightdream
Summary: Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.Cosette stops coming to Luxembourg. Marius enters the shadow.Life goes on.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent & Jean Valjean, Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy
Comments: 18
Kudos: 14





	1. Prologue: 1842

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crimsondust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsondust/gifts).



**Prologue: 1842**

“Will you be all right, Mademoiselle?” doctor Duchalard asked, his brows furrowed over gold-rimmed spectacles in a manner that spoke more of concern than decorum. “If you’d rather wait here, I can send one of the lads to find you a fiacre from the Rue de la Harpe.”

Cosette smiled. She liked the good doctor, with his easy generosity and courteous manner, but brushing off well-meaning overtures from strangers had been a pattern of her life from the moment her young mind had first divined the tension in her papa’s shoulders when interacting with people he didn’t know well. And doctor Duchalard was already privy to enough of her family’s troubles. “You are very kind. I thank you for your concern, but this won’t be necessary,” she answered. “Why, it’s only a hundred steps to Place Saint-Michel, I’ll have found transport and be well across the river in time it would take for your lad to get there and back!”

“You are probably right, Mademoiselle,” the doctor agreed readily enough, though the little furrow between his brows didn’t quite fade. “You’ll give my regards to your father?”

“Of course,” Cosette answered. “Thank you again, Monsieur, for everything you have done for us.”

“It has been my pleasure.” But there was an apology in the depths of his eyes, unvoiced but unhidden: Pierre-Louis Duchalard, a good doctor and a good man, had quickly learned to gauge even from the briefest of interactions what his clients could and couldn’t bear.

* * *

The sun was still low in the sky, when Cosette stepped out to the Rue de l’École de Médecine. She paused for a moment on the doorway, to adjust her attire – a deliberately nondescript morning dress and shawl, such as a fastidious grisette might wear. Alongside the simple linen cap with a hint of lace that led people to make assumptions about her marital status without claiming anything outright and good durable walking shoes, she felt almost invisible, walking down the Rue de la Harpe with hardly a glance on her. Even here, in the quarter of the students and bohemian playwrights, the morning streets were a domain of the working women – of the grisettes, shop girls, maids, laundresses and market-women, going about their business, exchanging greetings, laughing and talking together at street corners and shop fronts.

It was not quite a disguise, not like her papa’s old coats and false beards, but nevertheless there was something thrilling about this anonymity. Something thrilling, still, about travelling the city by herself, beholden only to her own fancies and impulses. Ill-advised perhaps – and certainly her papa would say so, she thought with a pang, already seeing his tired gentle eyes and the big hands cradling her own with newfound fragility, as a rough voice pleaded with her to take care – but needs must. They didn’t have a servant she could bring along as an escort – hadn’t been able to hold onto one, not someone they could _trust_ , since Toussaint. There was the arrangement with Madame P from the Rue Rousselet, but having someone come in to bring groceries and sweep the floors twice a week was one thing, travelling all the way to Latin Quarter to consult with a doctor was something else entirely. Cosette _had_ to go, papa needed help, and if doctor Duchalard couldn’t help him –

_Too much, too much._ The words morphed into a rhythm of her feet against the paving stones, the earth itself becoming a conduit to her worries, sapping away a little of her panicked tension at each footstep. _Too much. Don’t think about this now._

Perhaps it was the same restlessness brimming from the anxiety, combined with the nostalgic whimsy brought about by her earlier musings that propelled her past Place Saint-Michel and down the Rue d’Enfer, on a familiar path towards the Luxembourg gardens.

* * *

The relief of stepping through the wrought iron gates was almost a tangible thing. Cosette couldn’t help but smile to herself, feeling the tension of the busy city give way to the softer rhythms of the familiar alleys reaching out to welcome her. The old stone walls remained mostly hidden from the view, and yet she could feel them surrounding her like an embrace, or a half-forgotten lullaby.

It was a different world, Cosette thought, making her way past a group of idlers chattering by the eastern balustrade. One that belonged to a girl who was no longer a child and not yet a woman, who thrilled in observing the beetles in the elm trees and the passers-by on the gravel paths in equal measure and who thought she could glimpse a universe in a young man’s eyes. The girl had known darkness, yes, but secure as a baby bird under her papa’s wings, she had daringly turned her back to the shadows, knowing that some day she would fly, but confident in her mighty protector.

It was not the matter of being alone in the still-strange city that caused her disquiet, she reasoned to herself. Not the fear of getting lost, or being unable to handle the physical complications of her surroundings. Before she was anything else, she had been a little girl alone in the woods at nighttime. The streets in the daylight held no threat to her. The people were another matter, but out here she was one face of the thousands, dressed to be invisible – never completely safe, perhaps, but hidden from those who might wish personal harm to her or her father.

No, it was neither the city nor its people she feared, at least no more than a sensible person treating her surroundings with reasonable precaution. So why did the thought of being left alone in the world fill her with an unmeasurable terror?

_Too much. Not here, not now._ The mantra was a familiar comfort, but for once Cosette hesitated, stopped to question the modicum of peace it brought. If not here and now, then when and where?

The wind was picking up again, sending ripples across the grand fountain that scattered the toy boats and delighted the children observing this sudden calamity. Had she ever played here as a babe, still living with her mother? Cosette couldn’t recall. And yet, Luxembourg was as much her home as any of their numerous Parisian addresses, soaked with comfortable familiarity of simpler times. She squared her shoulders. Yes, she’ll walk her anxieties into these familiar alleys, whisper her fears into linden trees and accept all comfort the garden could offer. Then she’ll go home and be strong for her papa, for as long as she needs to be. And then…

Well, then she’ll keep on being strong. Surely it will get easier with practice.

* * *

The western side of the garden was quiet, as it had always been in Cosette's recollection; the more secluded side alleys and the nursery garden ever the preferred sanctuary for those seeking solitude. Directed more by almost forgotten habit than conscious thought, she was nevertheless unsurprised to find herself on a very familiar walk skirting the parapet of Pépinière.

The path where Cosette and Jean Valjean used to take their walks had remained all but unchanged in ten years: the elm trees, equally content to symbolise monarchist and republican values in their turn, had grown a bit taller; the hedges surrounding the nursery garden a bit wilder in form, but aside from such minor concessions to the mother nature that even the most determined landscaper cannot avoid, the gardens of Luxembourg remained firmly corralled within the harsh strictures that define _jardin à la française._

As if to further enforce the impression of such inertia, the walk remained as deserted as it had ever been in the past – with the single exception of a lone figure, sitting on a bench at the further end of the walk with his head bowed low, as if lost in prayer or contemplation.

The sight of her favoured childhood resting place after many years was such a welcome comfort that Cosette couldn’t help a flare of proprietary indignance at finding “her” bench occupied by a stranger. Yet even as she was about to turn away and dismiss the stranger from her mind, she found her gaze pulled back by something that was not quite curiosity and not quite alarm.

The man was young, perhaps a few years older than herself but with a severity to his expression and a great weight to his bearing that reminded Cosette a bit of her father. His clothes were those of a gentleman, but shabby and disorderly; not just worn down with a natural wear-and-tear of hard times, but by a lack of care. His face was pale and gaunt and naggingly familiar, his lips pressed together and his hands clenched in his lap. His entire posture radiated tension that couldn’t have been more conspicuous if he had been screaming. He seemed completely unaware of being scrutinised.

Cosette hesitated. Her first thought was to turn around, back to the relative safety of the public. The second – to keep walking, not bring any attention to herself and continue her intended path. After all, there was no reason to think this man should be connected to either police or Patron-Minette, and if he was – well, to continue as she was would be far less attention-catching and might moreover give her a chance to get a better look at this familiar stranger. There was no reason for anyone to expect to find her in this place. None at all.

Propelled perhaps more by curiosity than prudence, Cosette continued her walk, her pace perhaps a bit too brisk to be casual, but with her gaze carefully fixed ahead, even as she drew level with the stranger. She forced herself to take a few more steps before slowing down, made a show of adjusting her scarf – a perfect pantomime only ruined by a startled exclamation as the treacherous silk slipped between her fingers and slid down into gravel dust.

_Well, so much for subterfuge._ After giving a quick glare at the offending garment, Cosette took the pretext of checking it for damage to adjust her expression into a distracted smile which – she hoped – didn’t betray too much of either embarrassment or alarm, before turning to meet a pair of wide dark eyes.

Yet, even as she was about to muster up a greeting, the stranger’s expression morphed from surprise to shock to something almost akin to horror. What little colour there had been to his face drained away, and a broken whisper escaped from bloodless lips.

“Ursule?”

“I’m sorry?” Cosette took a step closer, all precaution momentarily superseded by concern. The man seemed to be trembling, his eyes still fixed on her, as if she was his lifeline, or perhaps, his condemnation. Was he ill, perhaps, confused enough to mistake her for someone else? Or maybe he was caught in a grip of some terrible memory. “Are you quite well, Monsieur?”

“No. No.” The man was shaking his head, but Cosette was quite sure the denial was not in answer to her question, but to whatever was passing through his head. Or perhaps, to whatever it was that he saw, looking at her with those wide, _familiar_ eyes.

All of a sudden, the man made an attempt to stand, despite his knees’ clear intentions to the contrary, and abandoning all lingering caution, Cosette rushed forward to meet him, giving the swaying man a gentle shove to collapse him back on the bench. “Monsieur you are not well. Now, stay here.” She frowned, as the stranger didn’t respond, merely blinking at her, as if startled out of his agitation. “I mean it. Stay here.”

That finally garnered a reaction. The man’s lips twitched, as if making an attempt at a smile. “Anything you ask, Mademoiselle. But you should know. I’m well, very well indeed. It seems to me that I’ve been blessed.”

Finally, the smile broke free. It was awkward, flustered, almost too hesitant to be considered joyful, but undeniably genuine. Cosette's heart stopped.

_Oh. it’s you._


	2. Chapter 1. 1832: The Facts From Which History Springs I

At this point, as the two young souls stand once again on the brink of entering each other’s orbit, it might not be remiss to explain a bit of the circumstances that have propelled them to their current course.

It had started, as most things in life, through happenstance. A letter dropped and lost, a church no longer visited, a tragedy of one young life scattered and lost in the immense sea of similar stories – it’s by such whims of the providence that the fates of individuals and nations are sealed. Even the one who sees all and knows all is not above certain vagaries of fancy.

Éponine Thénardier never delivered her letter. Jean Valjean never set his foot again in the Gorbeau house.

The spring of 1832 arrived with an ominous notice – the spectre of cholera, which after two years of morbid progress across Europe, was officially confirmed in Paris on the 29 th day of March. The devastating illness that eventually claimed nearly twenty thousand lives in the capital alone, and stuck particularly harshly amongst the poorest of the society, did nothing to soothe the growing unpopularity of the new regime, and the republicans, bonapartists and legitimists alike were increasingly overt in showing their discontent.

Jean Valjean, unsettled by the disease and the political unrest, had given serious consideration to quitting Paris altogether. Yet even as he was still weighing his options, the matters came to head on the ill-fated barricades of June and as suddenly as they had risen, the political tides settled back down in their uneasy rhythm: never far from the boiling point, but contained into something that the Parisians, famously unimpressed by such disturbances, had quickly grown used to. Jean Valjean had breathed easier, himself surprised by his quiet relief at being able to keep to the city he had grown used to calling home.

Cosette knew little of either the political turmoil or the ruminations of Jean Valjean – in a manner of a true Parisienne, the matter of governmental stability was not enough to unsettle her in itself, and she was, by this epoch, well used to her father’s strange whimsies, as grand and mercurial to her eyes as the births and deaths of dynasties.

Yet as the months and then years passed, and the household settled into its familiar rhythms, she grew aware of a growing solemnity that came to define her father’s regard of her, like a turning of seasons that brings about subtle but inexorable changes to the atmosphere.

As Cosette's spring matured into summer, Jean Valjean became increasingly aware of the chill of the winter looming.

There was new thoughtfulness to his expression as he observed his charge and his mind was consumed with concerns he had never allowed entry before. He considered their household, the modest expenditure which he provided without explanation and which Cosette presided over, their walks around the city and their charitable works, and found them to be woefully insufficient isolation against the growing chill. His conversations with Cosette took on new sombre undertones, even as their topics grew increasingly pragmatic.

First there had been the matters of finance – Jean Valjean had suddenly brought up the topic over breakfast in his usual cryptic manner, with little explanation or preface, or any hint of what he wished to achieve. He had smiled indulgently at Cosette’s attempts of deflection, yet remained firm against any efforts to reroute the conversation to more interesting topics. The next few weeks had been spent under the aegis of annual income and investment, taxation, property and inheritance laws.

From there, thoroughly bewildered Cosette, who had only ever heard the name of Napoleon in a history lesson, found herself studying the Code, until her familiarity satisfied Jean Valjean. Intrigued now, she took in all the new lessons, on topics varying from civil administration, to judicial language, to all the matters of housekeeping in which Toussaint hadn’t introduced her yet. They read newspapers together and discussed the day’s events over dinner table. Cosette's intellectual vigour might have been motivated more by the mystery than the lessons themselves, but she understood herself to have passed some invisible milestone of adulthood in her father’s eyes and was not displeased.

Gradually the sombre truth of the matter grew unavoidably clear – Jean Valjean, with finances and legislation, was making an attempt at the same effort the nuns of Petit-Picpus had done with housekeeping and prayer – to prepare her for an independent life. A life without her father by her side.

That is not to say he was entirely free with his knowledge. The lessons were riddled with peculiarities – ill-informed of such matters as she admittedly was, Cosette deeply doubted that most young women came into their inheritance by the means of detailed introductions of where and how to dig – and strange asides concerning the craft of imitation black glass jewellery and associated business models. Cosette swallowed down her questions, as was her habit, but her newly awakened curiosity took note of each oddity and filed them away for further observation.

However, even Cosette's lifelong practice in placid acceptance was sorely tested, when it came to the question of her civil status. Determined to extricate his charge from all potential difficulties, Jean Valjean took it upon himself to graft her, like a young branch, to an imaginary family tree of nondescript but irreproachable reputation, which, despite of it’s ephemeral nature, would hopefully prove solid enough to support her through life. Cosette was astonished: for as long as she could remember, she had clung to earth with only three roots: her beloved father and uncle, and a vision of a sainted mother: beyond them laid a great abyss, filled with forgotten terrors. She knew not what to make of a family of dead strangers, and for once, the questions spilled forth. Her father, however, remained impenetrable as ever, the tension of his back and his steadfast refusal to meet Cosette's eyes the only indications that her curiosity had found any purchase. Cosette subsided. An  _ acte de notoriété _ was prepared, securing Cosette's legal identity as the daughter of the elder Fauchelevent brother. Cosette, who had loved both Fauchelevents and in the privacy of her own mind had thought of them as her two fathers, was less concerned by that detail than she otherwise might have been, but her papa’s continued unwillingness to say anything real about their extended family perturbed her.

* * *

The summer of 1834 was approaching an end when Cosette, taking an afternoon stroll in the garden of Rue Plumet, was addressed by a strange man.

Such an event, while not especially common, wasn’t terribly noteworthy by itself: at this epoch, Rue de Babylone played a host to a regiment of soldiers. As a result of this arrangement, it was not unusual for young officers to pass down the Rue Plumet and, upon spying a pretty lady in the garden, to rattle their spurs and offer her a greeting or a teasing salute. One Lieutenant Gillenormand in particular had taken a habit of passing the time of day with Cosette whenever his errands took him past Rue Plumet, even going so far as to lavish compliments on the overgrown garden. Cosette in her turn thought him quite droll, but couldn’t shake the impression that the lancer thought himself to be indulging her, as one might do for a puppy or a small child.

This young fellow, however, was quite different from the soldiers who usually passed by. In fact, with his dark hair and eyes, a hard line of his profile and haughty bearing he brought with him a melancholy familiarity of a completely different kind.

It was a recollection of a happier summer, perhaps, tugging at Cosette's heartstrings a wistful melody, that kept her attention lingering on the stranger and left her less guarded than she otherwise would have been, when the other approached the fence and greeted her with an innocuous enquiry about the most convenient route to take back to the city proper.

Up close, the stranger didn’t look much like her young man from Luxembourg. His expression was cooler and less impassioned, his grace more languid, rather reminiscent of a sleek housecat. His speech was low and quiet, with an odd sort of deliberation to it, as if he was taking particular care with shaping his words. It suited him, Cosette noted, eyeing the man up and down, taking note of the careful needlework on a torn coat hem, the way his curls were arranged just-so. He seemed like a fastidious sort. She quickly hid a grin as her gaze caught on the single rose the man had been rolling between his teeth like a particularly fragrant cigar. How very peculiar!

If the man’s dignity was at all ruffled by her poorly hidden amusement, he gave no sign. His cool smile never wavered, as Cosette did her best to answer his question, which he responded with a comment about the quietness of the neighbourhood (why yes, if he was looking for a fiacre to take him back to the city, he should try his luck on Rue de Babylone, that was what she and papa did) idly wondering what it was like, living out here (quite different from the city centre – she and papa used to live on Rue de l’Ouest until two years ago and she was still getting used to having an entire garden for herself. No, there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment, they spent most of their evenings at home) and made a wry remark about how there wasn’t so much a dog barking to disturb the idyll.

However, when the man asked about her papa, Cosette stilled, suddenly aghast at herself. The question was hardly odd or intrusive, in light of what she herself had already revealed – but what was she doing, chattering away at a stranger as if she had no care in the world? As if she was unaware of her papa’s precaution? But then, what  _ did _ she know, really? Some vague glimpses of another life, a long time ago.

Be that as it may, she berated herself. She might never know the ghosts that kept her papa up at night, but the evidence of her own senses was something else. And there was no denying that, lingering nostalgia aside, there was something about this man that was rather unnerving.

Something of her thoughts must have been reflected in her expression, because the man drew back, as if realising his own presumption. “I apologize, I did not mean to linger so long. To tell the truth,” his voice lowered and just for a briefest moment, something almost genuine seemed to ripple under the surface of his polished composure, “you reminded me of someone I used to know.”

Cosette forced herself to relax. What had this stranger done, really, to deserve her suspicion? Her papa liked his secrets, what of it? She had none of her own, and knew nothing worth hiding. So she would speak of herself alone, and say nothing of her papa. “Your friend, what is her name? Perhaps I know her.”

The answering smile was thin. “I very much doubt it. It’s no matter – she’s gone now.”

The stranger hurried away with an abrupt goodbye, apparently suddenly in a great rush indeed. Cosette watched him go, feeling peculiarly disconcerted.

“Cosette?” Her papa was standing on the doorway of his lodge, his expression betraying nothing but the gentlest concern, but with a familiar tension in his shoulders. “Was someone here? I thought I heard voices.”

Cosette opened her mouth and closed it again. Thousand questions passed through her head – but would any of them be worth another aborted confrontation that would leave her papa tight-lipped and guilty? Would the truth of a curious stranger be worth the agitated tension that seemed to consume him every time someone stumbled too close to his sanctuary?

Cosette had recognised long ago that her papa’s reticence, however maddening, was born from a desire to protect her. Perhaps part of learning to be an adult meant being gracious in accepting that. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t protect him too. She gave him a smile – bright, guileless, reassuring without being obviously so.

“Just some fellow asking for directions.” Her gaze flickered down the street, thoughtful. “Must have been one of the soldiers.”

* * *

Cosette was in the garden again, when the burglars came.

The hour was late – this time it was insomnia that guided her path, and the heavy melancholy of late summer heat that set her wandering.

Insomnia – or perhaps providence.

In early September, the nights were already dark as in midwinter. However, the garden was ripe with the generous excess only the last breaths of summer can offer, and the stone bench Cosette had settled on was still aglow with the afternoon heat. It was very quiet: even the crickets had ceased their nightly song and the only sound belonged to warm gusts of wind, which dragged tattered clouds over star-strewn sky. It seemed to Cosette, as if the world itself had grown small and was closing in around her like an intoxicating blanket, and she’d only need to take a step to be lost in the immensity, a lark mingled with the stars.

The crunch of several pairs of boots on the gravel outside the fence had an effect of a thunderclap. The murmur of an agitated voice, unintelligible words ending in a quiet whistle, could have been a whisper in her ear, so close did it sound in this penumbral half-reality.

Cosette stilled. She thought she knew that voice, that low wheeze in odd contrast with higher-pitched words. But surely, the very idea was absurd. She stood up and, without really thinking about it, stepped deeper into the shadows.

Rather than continuing onwards as expected, the voices seemed to converge outside her fence, the first speaker joined by a lower growl, at least two pairs of footsteps approaching from the opposite direction.

Within every storm, there is a quiet centre, and within a human mind in crisis, there is a place of perfect clarity. The mind disregards panic as useless, and hesitation as a waste of time. Cosette didn’t wonder at the strangers’ purpose, or question her own understanding of the situation: she simply considered her options. To retreat back to the pavilion would be useless, to hide in the garden a hopeless endeavour. The shadows and lush greenery were keeping her out of sight from the fence, but would do little on closer observation: the pale satin of her pelisse all but glowed even in the starlight. To reach her papa’s lodge in such circumstances would be difficult, but it remained her only option.

Whispering a silent prayer of gratitude to her dear prodigal garden, Cosette retreated very carefully through the shadows.

She noted with somewhat detached annoyance that her knees seemed to be most unwilling to cooperate, trembling and locking at each step.

Her papa must have been already awake, for there was a candle burning and a book open on his writing desk, and he was standing on the doorway of his bedchamber before Cosette had even shut the door behind her. A single glance at Cosette's breathless, pale face, and a somewhat jumbled exclamation about strange men in the garden was all the explanation he needed.

Sometimes Cosette was truly glad for her Papa’s laconic nature.

Jean Valjean snuffed out the candle and gesturing at Cosette to remain quiet, stepped under the half-open window. Whatever he could see there, in the pitch darkness, Cosette couldn’t imagine, but she needed no light to recognise that pinched, tight-lipped expression. Within a moment, he gestured at her to disregard her pale pelisse, and replaced it with his own dark overcoat. The sleeves alone were nearly enough to drown Cosette; she pulled them up and tied the hems into a knot in front of her, while her papa adjusted the collar to help cover her face. He stopped with his hands on her shoulders, his eyes fixed on hers, filled with something Cosette had never seen in him before: fear.

“Run, child,” he whispered. “Run and hide.”

Cosette stared back at him. Surely he didn’t mean… “Papa?”

But papa was shaking his head already. “I will distract them, hold them off. But you must run. Do you understand?”

Arguing would be useless. Silence, however, would imply acceptance. “There is at least four of them. What are you going to do?”

Papa’s attention was turned back to the window. It had been less than a minute since Cosette entered the lodge, but it could have as well been a lifetime.

“It seems to me,” he said softly, “that I know these men.”

Cosette wanted to ask. There were so many questions she should have probably asked years ago, but now was truly not the place or time. Papa was moving again. With a few quick steps, he had pulled the key to the passage to Rue de Babylone from the desk drawer and pressed it into Cosette’s hand.

“Don’t move immediately, they might be keeping an eye on the lodge. Wait a few minutes. Don’t look back. Whatever you see or hear, don’t hesitate. Do you understand?”

His eyes met Cosette's again. Thousand unspoken words flickered across his face, but he said nothing, turned away and opened the door, leaving Cosette alone in the darkness.

* * *

If asked afterwards, what exactly came to pass during these next fateful minutes, Cosette would have been hard-pressed to give a conclusive answer. The memories shifted and morphed around her with each recollection, the confused impressions and cacophony of whispers and shadows cut into kaleidoscopic ribbons by sharp edged moments of star-bright clarity.

She could remember, in perfect detail, the click of the door shutting behind her, the overwhelming awareness of each passing second, and the clamour of thoughts struggling for dominance in her mind. She thought of her papa, out in the garden, and of Toussaint, still asleep in the pavilion, and most of all, her own utter powerlessness to help either of them. It occurred to her that papa had meant to spend the night away, and had only arrived back early by happenstance.

Just like before, there was only one choice available to her. But first, she had to know.

Instead of going straight for the passageway at the back of the lodge, Cosette made her way into papa’s bedchamber and with her heart hammering in her throat, climbed out of the open window.

The lodge was situated at the northern edge of the lot, the main building leaving it mostly obscured from the intruders in the south. All the same, it was all but impossible for her to move far from the lodge, without exposing herself to the prying gazes.

She never saw any of the would-be burglars. Well aware that the darkness was both helping and hindering her, she kept herself well out of line of sight and her eyes focused on her own movements, instead trying to listen to what was being said. Yet it seemed to her, when she later tried to reconstruct those moments in her memory, as if darkness and fear had compensated for the loss of sight and she could envision, without having ever seen it, an impression of her father standing tall and impenetrable, illuminated by some inner light, while the nightmarish figures circled and lurked around him. She could hear them speaking, but could only distinguish a handful of words.

The voices, however, remained clear and distinctive in her mind, four separate timbers, threatening and taunting, and her papa conspicuous in his silence. She could recall the muted surprise of recognising in one voice her odd visitor, but whatever dismay she might have felt upon realising she had been duped, was quickly eclipsed, when the fifth man finally made himself known, and spoke clearly, louder than the others, with a voice from abyss.

“Speaking of your daughter, she has grown up into a real beauty, hasn’t she? I hardly recognised, her, the little lark.”

Cosette froze. That voice spoke from her nightmares. Not in the screams and shouts and threats that intruded on her sleep when she felt herself to be anxious and overwhelmed, but in the quieter, colder ones, which crept up to her at winter nights and whispered in her ear like malevolent spirits, about the dark holes under the bridges where children slept, of bare feet turned blue with cold, and wondered what she could have possibly done to earn her silk sheets and kidskin shoes and how long could she expect such inexplicable windfall to really last? All these whispers, normally easily dissipated with a warm drink and Wagner, or plans for charitable actions crafted with defiant love, congealed around her like an icy spider web and she found that she couldn’t breathe. There were words, but she could hardly make sense of them – all she knew was that the owner of this horrible, impossible voice was in  _ her _ garden, knew who she really was and had come to take her back, had come –

Papa. Cosette's rattling thoughts stilled, snapping back into the odd, detached clarity. Yes, it was her papa speaking now. The words still eluded her, but it didn’t matter. Papa was buying her time: as long as the intruders thought she was still asleep in her chamber, they wouldn’t look for her in the garden. As long as they believed her to be in their grasp, they wouldn’t expect papa to resist.

Cosette retreated back into the shadows.

The trek through the passageway seemed to last an eternity, even though it couldn’t have been more than two minutes before she stumbled into the Rue de Babylone, out of breath and unnerved by the placid serenity of a street at repose. But her journey wasn’t over yet.

Cosette took a steadying breath. Her papa wouldn’t be happy with what she was going to do next, but what choice did she have?

Gathering papa’s coat tighter around her, she slipped down the street, keeping to the shadows as if she was herself a thief in the night, coming to halt in front of the imposing facade of the barracks that housed the local regiment. She could make out, by the eastern corner of the building, a reddish glimmer of a candle burned low: this was where the nightly sentry kept his vigil.

Quickly, without giving herself a chance to reconsider, she rapped her knuckles on the shutter, putting as much urgency into each knock as she could manage.

* * *

“It seems to me that we owe you a great debt,” Jean Valjean said. His voice was solemn and his gratitude genuine, but even someone who didn’t know him well couldn’t have failed to notice how stiff and awkward he sounded, or the guardedness of his bearing. Granted, certain vigilance was hardly inappropriate in a person who had just faced down five violent burglars and had an injury to show for it. Cosette itched to check on the knife wound on her papa’s arm, but he had already brushed her off with hardly a glance. It was probably just as well she was too exhausted to feel hurt.

To Cosette's silent relief, Lieutenant Gillenormand had taken almost instant liking to her papa, probably responding to the quiet gravitas that often seemed to draw young men to him: the lancer wouldn’t be the first soldier who thought he could glimpse a veteran under the white hair and frock-coat.

Whether impressed by his perceived background or by his equanimity in the face of crisis, the soldiers were treating Papa with careful respect, and were quick to respond to his suggestion that the four apprehended men – Cosette's young visitor had escaped in the confusion – be taken back the barracks, where they could be more easily secured, until the police was alerted.

The intruders were hustled away without further ceremony. The man from Cosette's nightmares had passed a sly remark about letting the biggest fish slip away, which had been met with unimpressed grunts, but neither Cosette nor her papa had missed the promise of vengeance in the last look the man had cast their way.

Within minutes, Cosette's little kitchen was almost empty again, leaving only herself, her papa, Toussaint and Lieutenant Gillenormand, who was making a valiant effort of dignified bearing, but couldn’t quite avoid giving off an impression that was in equal parts a preening cavalier and an excited boy, whose Christmas had unexpectedly arrived three months early. It must be quite boring, Cosette thought with weary amusement, being a soldier in Paris, with no wars to fight.

“Truly I should be the one thanking you, in the name of the Crown,” the lancer was saying. “Patron-Minette! What sordid business. Ha!” He turned around the room, glancing at each of the denizens of the house on Rue Plumet in their turn. “I must say, I’m incredibly impressed with all of your handling of the situation.” His gaze lingered on Cosette, blatantly admiring in a way it had never been before. “It was an inspired move, Mademoiselle, coming to us for help.”

Cosette shifted uncomfortably, avoiding her papa’s eyes. “Would you like something to drink, Lieutenant?” she asked, keeping her voice friendly, but making no effort to conceal her exhaustion. She saw the lancer’s gaze move from her slumped shoulders to Toussaint, who hadn’t moved from her seat, or said a single word since she’d been awakened by the commotion, to her papa, silent and inscrutable, and immediately demurred.

“Go pack your things, Cosette,” papa said, still not looking at her. She listened with half an ear as he turned down another offer to come back to the barracks to wait for the police, or to have one of the soldiers stand guard in the backyard, with an assurance that the whole family would be going to stay with his sister (Petit-Picpus? Cosette wondered, and immediately dismissed the thought) and would be leaving as soon as they were able to.

“You won’t be kept waiting for long,” Lieutenant Gillenormand said, as they made their goodbyes. The lancer was still perfectly coiffed and in amiable temper – Cosette wondered how he did it. “The police must be here soon, if they aren’t already, and my superiors are keeping men stationed on the Rue Plumet until sunrise.”

“Very sensible,” Jean Valjean agreed. He made hardly any effort to conceal his frayed nerves any more, but if the lancer noticed, he made no comment.

The next minutes passed in frenzied haste. Cosette didn’t ask – she knew they were working on deadline. She helped still-stunned Toussaint with packing up what the later deemed to be the most urgent necessities, only adding the books papa had requested her to study into one of the bags.

“This is it,” she declared, giving their luggage a critical look: two bags and a small trunk were all that was going to recall their home for three years. “Take these to the lodge, papa must be already waiting for us.”

Toussaint gave her a confused look. “But Mademoiselle, the police...”

Her words were cut off by several brisk knocks to the front door. Cosette grew still.

“Is already here,” she finished, her own voice distant to her ears. “Go already! I will talk to them.”

When Cosette was a little girl, she would sometimes look at her papa in repose and think that she could catch glimpses of something vast and dark within him: not frightening, if only in the way a great depth or an unfamiliar land might be, to an imaginative mind: awe-inspiring in it’s terrifying plethora of potentialities. It seemed to her now, that she was herself teetering on the brink of this abyss that had been carefully obscured from her, and that in having no knowledge of it, she had no choice but to either turn away and run, as her father had instructed, never looking backwards – or to run, but to run headfirst into the darkness.

In any other circumstances, the choice might have been a cruel one, for the bitter unfairness of having to be taken blindly, but Cosette, it will be remembered, was her father’s daughter – and her mother’s.

She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and went to answer the door.

* * *

When Cosette entered the lodge but half a minute later, she found her papa standing perfectly still, with a knapsack thrown over his shoulder, his faithful little valise cradled in his arms like an infant and the white head bowed low, as if waiting – for what?

What passed through Jean Valjean’s mind and soul during these moments? No words can say. For once, all the contrary, conflicting voices in his head were waiting in silent accord, for the judgement of the only voice that really mattered. This venerable being, who thought he could see the walls of bagne closing in around him, would have faced the horror and indignity of a galley slave thousand times over a single look of shame in his child’s eyes, and yet he waited, quiet and pliant, until Cosette rushed into the lodge, pale and anxious.

“I asked them to wait in the kitchen,” Cosette explained quickly. “You have been injured, why, really we should have sent for a doctor! But they’ll wait until Toussaint and I have finished dressing your wound. Shouldn’t take more than five minutes now. This is enough, isn’t it? It’s nearly dawn, the fiacres are about. Five minutes is enough.” She gave a quick glance to still confused-looking Toussaint, before turning back to her papa, who was staring at her as if in daze, his expression utterly unreadable. For a moment, she was terrified she had made a mess of the things, but after a long moment, he merely nodded.

“It’s enough,” he said, picking up Toussaint’s bags and turning to the back door, which opened into the secret passageway Cosette had already traversed less than an hour ago.

Cosette exhaled, trying to calm her suddenly unsteady breathing. She gave the baffled housekeeper an apologetic look, and with another quick glance towards the pavilion, shrugged on her plainest coat – dark-coloured and a bit too warm for the summer weather, but the least likely to be noticed or remembered – and followed her father into the night.

* * *

The fiacre trip was a silent affair, with all three travellers tense and exhausted, and wary of unguarded speech. Jean Valjean was still not quite looking at Cosette, but when she settled into the seat next to him, careful of his injured arm, he took her hand and cradled it gently between his calloused palms. This was an invitation enough: Cosette scooted closer to his side, and by the time the fiacre was making it’s rickety way across the river, she was already dozing off with her head on Jean Valjean’s shoulder. If either of the two was reminded of their first fateful trip to Paris, neither of them said a word.

“Rue de l'Homme-Armé.” Jean Valjean murmured in answer to an unspoken question, as he unlocked the door of their new home. The building was a towering edifice, which seemed to loom over them in predawn light like a mausoleum, quiet and dark around a cramped courtyard, which was as far removed from Rue Plumet as an ill-kept houseplant was from the gardens of Luxembourg. The indoors was hardly better, but Cosette made no comment.

She continued to hold her peace, as the porter and his wife were roused from their bed, alarmed to find themselves dealing with newcomers at such hour. She placated the couple the best she could, while her papa brought in their luggage and paid off the driver. She helped Toussaint unpack and make the beds, finally coaxing the exhausted woman to rest. She acquainted herself with the rest of the building, took a quick tour of the courtyard and of the street outside. Only when she was convinced that every other denizen of the house was asleep, did she make her way to her papa’s chamber.

She was unsurprised to find him standing by the window, his head bowed in a silent vigil. He had removed his hat and coat, but had otherwise made no effort to make himself comfortable, nor had he taken care of the wound on his arm. If he noticed Cosette entering the room, he gave no indication.

Outside, the first rays of the still invisible sun were touching the rooftops, setting them aglow with an inner fire.

“There’s a martin’s nest by the cornice,” Cosette said. “You can see it better from my room. The baby birds are gone, of course, but you can see the eggshells.”

Her papa didn’t respond.

“I chatted a bit with the porters,” Cosette continued. “They’re lovely people, very sweet. Of course they had lots of questions. I told them we had just arrived in Paris, with the earliest post carriage.”

It seemed to her that her papa’s shoulders tensed a bit at that: whether he was surprised or mortified by this lie, or by the last one, she couldn’t begin to guess. Still, he didn’t respond.

“Papa,” Cosette drew level with Jean Valjean, stopping by the window at his side. “Are you terribly mad at me?”

That garnered a response. “Mad, child? Why would I be mad?”

Cosette huffed. “I went to the authorities. I was wandering outside in the middle of the night in the first place, like a silly child. I spoke to this man Montparnasse – I swear I didn’t tell him anything important, but I should have –” she broke off, and finally burst out what was truly bothering her “and now you won’t even look at me!”

The broken, shocked look at papa’s face was enough to crumble whatever composure she was still clinging at. She quickly turned her gaze away, blinking against the hot, unwanted tears. The morning outside was bright and warm as only late summer can be, the dew clinging to rather withered looking grapevines like drops of gold. Everything seemed astonishingly, gloriously normal.

A large hand rested on her shoulder. She steeled herself under the weight of it, but now it was her turn to look away.

“Child,” that word, in her papa’s voice, still had the magic quality to make her feel better – if it weren’t for the tremble in his tone, that turned the comfort into a plea. “Cosette. You did nothing wrong. You made sensible choices in a very difficult situation with limited information, and if you hadn’t acted as you did, this night could have ended very differently.” He took a deep breath. “I told you to run. I didn’t tell you where to. I have left you nowhere to seek shelter, and for that I have nothing to blame but my own short-sighted selfishness. Never apologise for protecting yourself. There is nothing on the earth more important to me than your safety.”

Cosette bit her lip. It seemed to her, as if they were having two separate conversations and she still didn’t understand enough to cross that gap “I didn’t know what to do,” she admitted. “Not then, with the burglars and the soldiers, and not latter, with the police. I’ve always trusted you.”  _ Even if you never completely trusted me. _ “But I knew you depended on me to choose right, and I had no idea what the right choice was. I’m not deaf or blind, papa. It’s not as if I don’t have some idea of the way things are.”

“The way things are, child?” The words were simple, the tone comforting, but Cosette didn’t have to look at her papa to recognize the tension in him, the way he shut himself away from her, even now.

Outside, the young birds were making their capering way across the edge of the roof, long out of their nest, but not yet gone from under their parents’ watchful gaze.

“I know you don’t trust the police.” She took a deep breath and plunged forward, into the new depths she had never dared before. “But that’s not just it, is it? We’re not simply avoiding notice any more, we are running away – and it’s got to do with the things that  _ he _ said to the officers, and why we were running before, and all these other things, since I was a little girl.

All this running, all this time – and I still don’t know where we are going, let alone what we’re running from.”

There was no answer from behind her, not that she really expected one.

Very slowly, Cosette turned around and for the first time since they had bid each other good night several hours and a lifetime ago, father’s and daughter’s eyes met.

She stood pale and exhausted in the first rays of the morning light, with her lips pressed tight and her eyes stinging with unshed tears.

“Father I think we need to talk.”


End file.
